Back To You (A Remington Medical Contemporary Romance) Read online

  “Moving him the way you did was completely reckless,” Charlie pressed, stepping in close enough to make the already small lounge feel impossibly tiny and hell-hot. “Not all spinal traumas present with visible injury or symptoms.”

  “You don’t handle a lot of trauma in the field, do you?”

  Parker heard the words only after they’d sidestepped his brain-to-mouth filter, and shit. Shitshitshit. Yeah, he’d meant them, but he hadn’t meant to actually say them out loud. Especially when he considered—too late, fuck him very much—how little leverage he had with regard to the whole attending/intern, happily married/horribly divorced thing.

  And judging by the emerald-green fire sparking in Charlie’s stare, she knew it exactly as well as he did.

  “I’m an attending physician at this hospital and a board-certified surgeon, Mr. Drake.” The fact that she’d swapped out the title of “doctor” that he’d earned upon entering his internship didn’t bode well for his career. The fact that she hadn’t stepped back to give him so much as an ounce of breathing room that didn’t carry the tropical-island smell of her shampoo? That didn’t bode well for his control, which was already eighty-percent blown at the fierceness in her eyes and the full, firm set of her lips, still less than a foot from his. “I’m fairly certain my training trumps yours. Unless there’s an M.D. after your name that I missed?”

  “No, I…no,” he managed.

  “Okay, then. Now that we’ve got that clear, let’s review. You are an intern. I am an attending. That means you’ll do whatever I tell you to when you’re on my service, and you’ll do it exactly as I tell you to. You won’t cut corners, you won’t break rules, and you won’t slack off. Understood?”

  “I’m just here to become a doctor, Charlie. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Let’s start with a lesson in etiquette. I go by Charleston now, since we’re grown-ups. But you can call me Dr. Becker…Dr. Drake,” she added, to hammer the formality of their relationship and the arm’s length that went with it all the way home.

  Parker had earned it, he knew. The last time he’d seen Charlie, he’d been walking away from her. Now, the fate of the career he wanted more than anything, the one he’d waited far too long to have, was in her hands.

  Karma hadn’t so much bitten him on the ass as it had shanked him and left him to bleed out on the linoleum.

  “Yes, Dr. Becker,” he said. If she wanted to dish out some attitude along with his training, he could take it.

  Something flickered across her face, an odd expression Parker had never before seen on her and couldn’t name.

  “Good. Just remember what I said. If you breathe a word of our past to anyone here, every infected abscess, every impacted bowel, and every drunk who needs a banana bag that I see in this ED for the next ten weeks will have your name on it. Welcome to your internship.

  4

  “Dr. Drake. So good of you to finally grace us with your presence.”

  Dr. Langston zeroed a stare through his horn-rimmed glasses, hitting Parker point-blank between the eyes. The second Charlie had freed him from their one-sided showdown in the lounge, he’d scrambled to try and catch up to his class in a timely manner. But between the fact that he’d been cutting it far too close to begin with and his shirt had become a biohazard the second that bike messenger had bled on it, he hadn’t stood a chance. Parker knew he could probably explain away both his lateness and his attire in a set of scrubs he’d swiped from a supply closet. Rather than call any further attention to either—not that it would be an easy task, because Langston’s eyes, along with those of three other interns, were totally on him like surgical glue—he simply murmured a sincere, “I apologize, Dr. Langston,” and a promise that it wouldn’t happen again as he melted in at the back of the group.

  “As I was saying,” Langston continued, gesturing to the open space of the emergency department’s main hub with one hand. “Much of your time will be spent in this section of the hospital. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with the exact locations of the curtain areas, the exam rooms, and the trauma rooms, the sooner, the better. There are no tour guides in the emergency department. Likewise, you’ll need to know where the lab and all the other departments in the hospital are located. Especially radiology.”

  He gave a brief yet thorough rundown of the layout of the ED, all of which, lucky for Parker, was the same as it had been six years ago. The hospital had upgraded their charting system—entirely paperless now, praise be to the technology gods—so there was at least one learning curve. But as for the rest? Parker was already itching to get his hands on a patient or three.

  Funny, he wasn’t the only one. “Excuse me? Dr. Langston?” One of the two female interns in the group, a tall, dark-haired brunette whose ID badge labeled her as Sofia Vasquez, raised her hand. “When will we get to see patients?”

  It was a ballsy question considering Langston hadn’t been anywhere near the topic of patient care, and a definite assertion of the woman’s ambition, both of which Parker had to admit, he admired.

  Langston, however? Looked less than impressed with the question. “While I can certainly appreciate your enthusiasm, Dr. Vasquez, you might want to learn to walk before you run a marathon. That is, after all, the very reason we have an orientation. To get you oriented. Plus, I’d prefer you not kill anyone on your first day.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vasquez said, although the flush on her face looked to be just as much irritation as it was chagrin.

  “Moving on to logistics,” Langston said, all business. “Remington Memorial is a teaching hospital, and as such, we do things a bit differently than some other facilities. While you’ll work with the senior residents on some cases, your progress will also be supervised by an attending physician during every shift. In order for each of you to experience a variety of teaching styles, these assignments will rotate.” At the smile slipping over the male intern’s face, Langston added, “I know some of you are thinking you might have a say in who you get to work with and when, or that you might be able to suck up to a specific doctor in order to build your experience in certain specialties. Consider this your one and only wake-up call. Those decisions aren’t up to you. In fact, very few decisions this year will be up to you.”

  Parker’s gut tapped restlessly. He remembered the lack of control from the first time he’d been an intern, and he’d known far better than to think six years would’ve done much to change it. Likewise, if his time at Station Seventeen had taught him anything, it was that the chain of command existed for a reason. But he’d performed hundreds of advanced procedures, many of them on gravely injured or ill patients. Being relegated to Band-Aids and boo-boo duty wasn’t exactly on his wish list, no matter how badly he wanted to become a doctor.

  “Ah, speaking of attending physicians, here’s Dr. Kendrick,” Langston said. The petite blonde woman, who had been talking with one of the nurses and balancing an armload of electronic charts in the crook of one arm, looked up with a smile.

  “Catch me while you can, Dr. Langston. I’m on my way to go check out a hockey-induced shoulder injury, figure out the cause of a nine-year-old’s fever that just won’t quit, make sure the belly rash in curtain three is indeed the chicken pox Kelly suspects it to be rather than some scary mystery illness, and examine a set of newborn twins. Unless a peds trauma comes in, in which case, you can add that to my list.”

  Langston seemed unfazed at her juggling act, but said, “Well, I won’t keep you any longer than necessary, then. I just wanted to introduce our new class of interns. Dr. Vasquez, Dr. Boldin, Dr. Young, and Dr. Drake, this is Dr. Kendrick, your very busy peds attending.”

  “Oooh, interns!” She grinned, and God, her bedside manner was perfect for peds. “Goody. Can’t wait to put you guys to good use.”

  Both Parker and Vasquez’s heads sprang up. Peds wasn’t Parker’s first choice as a specialty, or even his fifth. But right now, he’d give his left nut to be somewhere other than the sidelines. Good use sounded fucking fantastic.

  “They’ll start their hands-on assignments tomorrow, don’t worry,” Langston said, busting Parker’s now-now-now bubble with less than a full breath. “Do you know where we can find Dr. Sheridan?”

  “Surgery. He’s doing an open tib-fib repair with Dr. Mallory. And I think Dr. Higgins is off today. But Dr. Michaelson just headed to the ambulance bay with Dr. Becker. I heard there was some sort of accident at a construction site, and—”

  She didn’t get to finish. The automatic doors leading from the ambulance bay to the business end of the emergency department slammed wide as two paramedics, a nurse, Tess, and Charlie burst through, all moving quickly and shouting clipped directives at each other. Parker’s pulse went from resting to ricochet in less than a blink. Not at the fact that everything had happened so swiftly, or that the patient on the gurney was bleeding profusely enough to leave a gut-twistingly large trail of blood on the linoleum. Nope.

  What did turn Parker’s composure into Silly Putty was the sight of Charlie also on said gurney, with a pale yellow trauma gown covering her body and a pair of protective glasses firmly in place on the bridge of her nose. She’d planted her knees on either side of the patient’s right leg, her palms flattened over whatever wound was causing the blood loss. The rigid lock of her elbows, her shoulders, and her spine said she’d braced all of her body weight over the wound. The sheer will on her face said she would not, under any circumstances, let him die on her watch, no matter how hard he wanted to bleed to the contrary. She was focused. Calm. Perfectly in control despite the chaos around her.

  Christ, she was stunning.

  And, yeah, he was screwed.

  “We need some help over here!” Tess yelled, her stare landing on Langston, who was alrea
dy in motion.

  “Stay right here,” he cautioned the group of interns over one shoulder, sharply enough that none of them, not even Vasquez, argued. “Don’t move from this spot unless you want to forfeit your placement at this hospital. Dr. Michaelson”—he swung toward Tess, the nitrile gloves a nurse had passed over already halfway in place—“what’ve you got?”

  “Gas main explosion. Shrapnel to the right upper leg looks like it hit his femoral artery.” She rattled off the patient’s vitals, none of them sounding remotely good. The man on the gurney let out a weak groan at the same time Parker’s gut sank like a chunk of cement. No wonder Tess had called for all hands. An injury like that was almost always fatal. “Tourniquet is in place, but—”

  “No time for a workup down here,” Langston said, redirecting the gurney, and Charlie along with it. “Kelly, call surgery and tell them we’re coming up, stat, and that we’ll need six units of O-neg for a rapid transfusion. Then have them call OR three and see if Mallory can cut Sheridan loose from that tib-fib. This guy needs the best goddamn trauma surgeon we’ve got, and he needs him now.”

  The elevator doors at the end of the hall opened, swallowing the group in a yawning gulp. As quickly as the onslaught of noise and movement had begun, it was over, leaving the four of them standing there with nothing more pressing to do than twiddle their thumbs and wait.

  “That is a lot of blood.”

  The other male intern broke the silence, warily eyeing the thick swath of blood that an orderly was already beginning to clean from the floor.

  “The human body holds eight pints,” Vasquez pointed out, shrugging. The intern—Boldin, per his ID badge—ran a hand over his skull trim. His dark brown skin changed by a shade as he continued to eyeball the blood, but still, he stood his ground.

  “I know. I just didn’t think we’d see someone lose all eight on the first day.”

  Ehhhh… “Actually, that looks more like two. Give or take,” Parker said. It was still a lot, especially considering the guy had probably lost more, both on-site and in the ambo. He definitely didn’t envy the two paramedics for the cleanup job they’d have to put to their rig before they could go back into service.

  “Do you think it’s going to be that intense all year?” the other female intern asked warily, and Parker’s answer spring-boarded out before he could alter it.

  “Nah. That’s definitely a big trauma. Most cases in the ED are a lot tamer.”

  Her brows, along with everyone else’s traveled up, and shit. The last thing he wanted to do was call attention to the fact that this wasn’t his first rodeo as an intern.

  “I, ah, did a rotation in Northside’s ED over the summer,” Parker added quickly. “I’m guessing things here are similar since it’s not that far away.”

  It was a lame save, but in a pinch, it’d do. At any rate, everyone seemed to bite.

  “We didn’t meet earlier,” the woman said, extending a hand. “I’m Erika Young.”

  “Parker Drake.” He made the rounds with Boldin, whose first name turned out to be Christopher, and Vasquez, who didn’t hesitate to level him with a frown.

  “Don’t you think the scrubs are overkill?” she asked. “It’s orientation, for God’s sake.”

  Parker glanced down at the scrubs, light green to label him as either an intern or a senior resident versus the nurses, who wore blue, and the attendings, whose scrubs were dark green.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, although he didn’t elaborate. He remembered well how quickly alliances formed in this program. Hell, he’d formed one with Charlie, who had formed one with Tess, on their very first day. But Charlie had been eager and whip-smart, her pull like some gravitational field he’d been powerless against, the way the tides were at the mercy of the moon.

  Parker blinked, then shook his head, and the memory off with it. Repeating his internship was going to take every ounce of his focus. He needed to leave the past in the past if he was going to have any prayer of getting through it. He knew he’d have to navigate his relationship with his fellow interns skillfully and strategically, kind of like being on Survivor. After all, rivalries formed even more swiftly than alliances.

  “Wait…” Boldin’s brow bent in thought as he examined Parker with more care. “You’re the paramedic, right?” At the confusion that had to be plastered all over Parker’s face, he added, “I overheard some nurses talking about the paramedic intern who saved a guy who got hit by a car.”

  “I witnessed an accident and brought the guy in,” Parker said, lifting one shoulder halfway before letting it fall back into place. “Helped stabilize his broken leg, but that’s it.”

  “You witnessed an accident on your way here? Today?” Vasquez’s tone made it sound as if Parker had won the Powerball.

  “Yeah. Someone clipped a bike messenger’s back tire about a block from the ED.”

  “How bad was the break?” Young asked, leaning in. Shit. So much for Parker deflecting the spotlight. If the nurses had been talking about it, then the facts were out there. If he tried to downplay things, it would only draw more suspicion.

  So Parker said, “Open tib-fib.”

  “The one Dr. Sheridan was just doing the repair on?” Young’s stare widened, her white-coated shoulders bumping against the wall behind her as she drew back in surprise. “That is so cool.” Her cheeks flushed, and she backtracked. “I mean, not for the patient, obviously, but…”

  “So, you were a paramedic before this, huh?” Boldin asked. “I bet you saw some really crazy cases.”

  “A few, yeah.” Okay, this was good. While he didn’t want to cop to having been an intern once before unless it was absolutely necessary, his paramedic training? That, he could talk about for a month. “Some cases are tough, but you do learn how to handle the blood.” God, it had practically been the first thing he’d learned.

  Parker pushed at the memory that wanted to rise, turning his back on it with practiced ease as Boldin nodded, Young along with him. “I’d be interested in hearing about some of them. You know, if they ever give us any time for that kind of thing,” he said.

  Before Parker could tell the poor guy he wouldn’t even get time to bathe, let alone stop to take a piss half the time nature called, Vasquez interrupted.

  “It’s cute that you want to be BFFs and everything, but you need a rendezvous with reality, Boldin. He’s totally got the advantage over the rest of us”—she jerked her head at Parker, her long, dark braid snapping over one shoulder—“which means he’s going to get dibs on all the cool procedures, including scrubbing in on surgeries. We’re all going to have to fight for second place now.”

  Parker took it back. Ballsy and ambitious weren’t enough to adequately describe Vasquez. She was a fucking shark, and yep, he still admired that. Provided that her attitude didn’t affect his end game, anyway.

  “I might have some experience in the medical field, but I’m still an intern. I’m here to learn, same as you.”

  “That’s a mighty humble attitude,” a very familiar, very female voice cut in from behind Parker, making his heartbeat accelerate and his gut drop, all at once. “Sadly, in a program this difficult, humble won’t get you very far. The only way you’ll have a prayer of making it is hard work.”

  Parker turned toward Charlie. At some point after their confrontation this morning, she’d changed into scrubs, topping them with her doctor’s coat and a stethoscope draped around her neck. Smart, considering the shirt Parker had started his day in was now a starched, pressed lining for a biohazard bag in the second floor supply closet. The bloodied trauma gown she’d been wearing as she’d treated the femoral artery guy was now gone, but her sin-serious gaze was still firmly in place.

  Oh, he wanted to say so many things in reply. He wanted to say he could handle a difficult program just fine, along with whatever else she wanted to throw at him. He wanted to tell her—no, show her—that he wasn’t really humble, and that he had the skills and the street smarts to back up all the confidence he’d built since he’d seen her last. But if Parker was going to move forward, he had to look forward. And that meant treating her like any other doctor on staff.